There currently exist systems for customer billing in industries wherein a large number of customers are billed periodically based upon monthly (recurring) charges as well as dynamic use related (non-recurring) charges. Of interest in the design of such systems is the flexibility with which such systems can adjust to changes in such variables as billing structure, tax rates, bill formatting and incentive program implementation. Also of great importance in these systems is the ability to service an increasing number of customers as time progresses.
In a typical billing systems, the system should be designed to interface with peripheral devices and applications providing customer usage data from a variety of sources. In addition, such systems usually allow an employee of the billing company to interact with the system to, for example, specify the time, format and nature of invoice generation.
One example of an industry in which such a billing system is an important part of day to day operations is the cellular telephone/telecommunications industry. In recent years communication via cellular telephones has grown explosively. The requirement for convenient communications has become the norm in business as well as residential markets. Cellular telephones are found everywhere from automobiles and restaurants to golf courses and airplanes. In meeting the challenge of providing quality cellular services to this ever expanding subscriber base, the cellular telecommunications industry has identified a number of issues which need to be addressed in order to maintain and/or improve customer relations.
A primary concern for a cellular carrier is its ability to provide accurate and easily understood billing statements so that customers will respond promptly with payment and so that customer service interactions may be minimized. In order to achieve this objective, it is often desirable for a cellular carrier to implement such a billing system as a high-volume application with the ability to communicate with applications providing for customer service data entry and retrieval as well as automated data collection mechanisms such as a switch for monitoring customer calls, airtime and toll information. In addition, the overall system may provide fraud detection capabilities, security controls, sales and marketing support, funds collection support and message processing.
Customer service data and applications are generally provided on-line to customer service agents. Typically, the bill summary, bill detail, current balance, payment and adjustment information are available on-line. An agent can view customer information by querying on virtually any field in the database. Customer account information can be altered through customer update screens.
Fraud in areas such as subscription, airtime and roaming fraud have cost the cellular industry millions of dollars over the course of just a few years. In response to this problem a number of security controls have recently been developed for use by the industry. Such security controls include electronic switching networks (ESN's), identification by social security number, mobile number detection and monitoring reports which summarize long distance charges billed versus those recorded at the switch.
With respect to sales and marketing support, the system may provide the ability for airtime, product and other rating promotions to be created through the construction of a new rate plan in the appropriate tables. Access, service and equipment charges, like the rate plans are table-driven. Equipment charges can be categorized as recurring (those that will bill each month for a specified period of time), or non-recurring (one time charges).
Because of the periodic nature of the billing process in the cellular telephone industry, most systems have performed customer billing and invoicing as a sequential batch process. The traditional thinking on how to run the batch process has been influenced primarily by the strengths and weaknesses of the large engine uniprocessor mainframe environment. Thus, batch processes are performed in a "task oriented manner". In other words, each of the component tasks for all of the customer accounts is performed in sequence, prior to the processing of any other component tasks for each of the customer accounts.
Typically, the above-described batch processing has been performed on large scale uniprocessors, such as IBM or DEC brand mainframes which are capable of high throughput. Uniprocessor machines may be provided which operate at about 100 million instructions per second (MIPS). One example of a uniprocessor architecture, although not necessarily operating at 100 MIPS, is the HP 9000 Series 800 Server Family manufactured by the Hewlett Packard Corporation. FIG. 1 depicts the architecture of this machine. As can be seen in FIG. 1, only a single CPU 100 is provided. CPU 100 interfaces, through memory and I/O controller 110, to an expandable RAM storage area 120. A single copy of the operating system will generally reside in main memory 110. System bus 130 is further provided to allow for integration into a local area network or LAN as well as to attach various peripherals desired in order to meet system needs.
As batched applications comprise a plurality of tasks, and uniprocessor architectures are capable of executing only a single task at a time, uniprocessors are often complimented with special multitasking hardware and operating system software (such as UNIX) which allow the single processing resource to be efficiently distributed among a set of simultaneously initiated tasks. Although this multitasking increases a uniprocessor machine's overall throughput and workflow capabilities, the simultaneously initiated tasks are still in contention for a single processing resource and the amount of execution time allotted to each individual task decreases in proportion to the number of tasks initiated.
To overcome this problem with multitasking, multiprocessor systems, which utilize more than one CPU, have been developed to provide tasks with the same resources offered by their uniprocessor counterparts but further allow these resources to be shared among a set of concurrently executing tasks. In multitasking, multiprocessor environments, various tasks are distributed to the various processors. A fine grain approach parallelizes groupings of similar tasks with all of the tasks being assembled into a finished batch after parallel processing completes. Coarse grain, on the other hand, simply parallelizes groupings of various tasks of the job without regard for the similarity of the tasks within each grouping.
Several multiprocessor systems have become widely used in recent years. Some examples include massively parallel processing systems comprising a plurality of individual processors, each having its own CPU and memory, organized in a loosely coupled environment, or a distributed processing system operating in a loosely coupled environment, for example, over a local area network.
One multiprocessing technology, termed symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), is a relatively recent architecture that provides applications with a set multiple of CPUs which operate in a tightly-coupled shared memory environment. Many major hardware vendors, e.g., IBM, DEC, HP, NCR, Sequent, Tandem, and Stratus, have released or announced computers that provide this type of architecture and associated processing. SMP techniques and functions have also been provided in some operating systems, such as, for example, an operating system sold under the trademark (MICROSOFT NT) and various derivatives of the multitasking operating system products sold under the trademark (UNIX). In addition, certain databases, particularly relational database management systems, sold under the trademark (ORACLE) and the trademark (INFORMIX) provide features that accommodate SMP techniques and speed up performance in SMP environments.
One significant advantage with an SMP system is scalability. An SMP platform, such as the SMP platforms sold under the trademark(SEQUENT), for example, includes a plurality of tightly coupled individual processors each operating under the control of a shared operating system and each accessing a shared memory. The processors share peripheral devices and communicate with one another using a high speed bus (or special switch), special control lines and the shared memory. A hardware platform designed as an SMP system is generally significantly less expensive than its uniprocessor counterpart for a comparable number of MIPS. This is primarily because of the SMP environments ability to use either a plurality of low cost general purpose CPU's, for example 486-type processors, or mass marketed proprietary processors such as some RISC chips. By contrast, most processors operating in the uniprocessor environment have been specially designed and produced in small quantities and therefore, their price is relatively high. Mass marketing of proprietary processors having broad applications, however, greatly reduces machine cost. The number of processors employed in an SMP environment is variable so that processors can be added to the system as desired. Thus, for example, one SMP platform may have 4 processors and another may have 20.
Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. provides one model, the S2000/450 of its SMP platforms sold under the trademark (SYMMETRY), which may include from 2 to 10 processors (typically Intel 486/50 Mhz CPUs) and another model, the S2000/750, which may include from 2 to 30 processors. Both models provide from 16 to 512 Mbytes of physical memory with 256 Mbytes of virtual address space per processor. Each processor runs a single, shared copy of Sequent's enhanced version of UNIX which is called DYNIX/ptx. Specifically, the version 2.0 operating system distributed under the trademark (DYNIX/ptx) is preferred.
For purposes of illustration, a block diagram of the relevant portions of the S2000/750 is shown in FIG. 2. As will be discussed below, a preferred embodiment of this invention is resident on the S2000/750 SMP system manufactured by Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. A system bus 260 is provided to support a multiprocessing environment. System bus 260 is configured as a 64 bit bus and carries data among the systems CPUs, memory subsystems and peripheral subsystems. It further supports pipelined I/O and memory operations. The bus can achieve an actual data transfer rate of 533 Mbytes per second. Each processor board 210 in the S2000 system contains two fully independent 486 microprocessors of the type sold, inter alia, by the Intel Corporation. These processor boards (of which there may be up to 15 in the S2000/750) are identical. The memory subsystem 220 consists of one or more memory controllers, each of which can be accompanied by a memory expansion board 270. The controllers are available with either 16 or 64 Mbytes of memory and the expansion boards may add 96 or 192 MBytes.
The Quad Channel I/O Controller (QCIC) 230 board supports up to 24 disks 240, six each on four independent channels. Multiple QCIC boards can support up to 260 GBytes of storage per system. System I/O performance growth can increase as disks are added. A VMEbus interface provides a link to Ethernet 246 and terminal line controller 248, among other possibilities. Further, the ability to add a parallel printer 252 is provided through system services module 254. Finally, a SCSI interface is provided for integration with various secondary storage devices 258.
In the past, symmetrical multiprocessing platforms such as those manufactured by Sequent have been utilized primarily for processing individual events, such as in an On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) environment. OLTP systems frequently involve large databases and interaction with a plurality of users, each typically operating a terminal and each using the system to perform some function requiring a predictable response within an acceptable time. In such an environment, interactive user requests, such as may be provided in customer service systems, are processed. Because each of the user requests is typically independent, the SMP system is particularly effective.
In order to effectively utilize an SMP system operating in a multitasking, multiprocessing environment, it is necessary to optimize task distribution among the varying processors. While the sequencing and parallellization with respect to the application itself, is generally handled by the UNIX operating system, the data partitioning at execution time must be accomplished through a parent process designed for optimal segregation. Such data partitioning is appropriate for applications that perform the same operations repeatedly on large collections of data. A cellular telephone billing cycle is one such application that lends itself to this type of programming method.
In the cellular telephone environment, accounts may be billed in a number of ways. For example, accounts may exist as individual accounts or they may be aggregate accounts having a high-level summary bill and a number of lower level user accounts. As will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, it is much less difficult to process a complete aggregate account in one segment instead of dividing it up into a number of separate segments. Moreover, the number of accounts to be placed in each segment should be accurately determined and the distribution of such accounts preferably occurs such that workload is evenly distributed among segments. Finally, various control tasks must be performed by a high level process in a batching billing system. Error handling, segment redistribution and error reporting must be efficiently and accurately implemented to maximize throughput as well as service quality.
Thus, a need has arisen for a batch processing system which is versatile so that it may operate on either a uniprocessing system, a symmetrical multiprocessing system, a massively parallel processing system or a loosely coupled distributed processing system. Further, a need has arisen for a system which can effectively control and distribute processes based upon varying aggregations of data, system errors and dynamic availability of resources. Additionally, a need has arisen for a scalable computer architecture capable of effectively and efficiently processing customer account billing statements.